Fiscal Cliff Scare Talk Follows Shock Doctrine Script
http://www.alternet.org/economy/fiscal-cliff-scare-talk-follows-shock-doctrine-script
If you have already read The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein you have probably been rolling your eyes at all this “Fiscal Cliff” scare talk. “Here they go again” you’re thinking… If you haven’t read the book, you should. You really, really should.
The Phony “Fiscal Cliff” Scare
At the end of the year the Bush tax cuts expire. When this happens tax rates will rise modestly to where they were when Clinton was President. Also at the end of the year budget “sequestration” occurs. This means that the various cuts Congress approved to end the debt ceiling “crisis” will begin to phase in. (Remember, the debt-ceiling “crisis” was when Republicans refused to allow the country to honor its debts, holding the economy hostage, unless they got deep budget cuts in the things We the People do for each other.)
That’s it. That’s the “crisis.” All of the people who had been hysterical about the budget deficit “crisis” are now hysterical that taxes will go up and spending will go down. Go figure. Maybe — just maybe — I shouldn’t even say it — these “serious people” weren’t … serious … when they said they were worried about the deficit. You see, the hysteria now is because tax rates at the top will go up (cutting the deficit), and because a big part of those budget cuts (cutting the deficit) is military spending. Unfortunately the sequestration also cuts important things that help a lot of people and our economy. But these cuts do not take place all at once (a “cliff”), they will be phased in over time, and the Congress can act at any time to halt any of these cuts.
The “Fiscal Cliff” is not a cliff and the language itself is intended to scare people . The name itself is designed to create panic, evoking disaster imagery of people and the economy falling off a cliff. It is the latest manufactured “crisis” and we are all supposed to be terrified and demand immediate and extreme solutions.
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"Fiscal Cliff" my ass. 
The big question is what do we do?
My guess is:
1. Let the President know we get it and will not support caving to GOP/1% demands over taxes.
2. Write letters to the editor whenever and wherever possible, cluing in the rest of the population that there is no fiscal cliff.
Thank you for the critical bullet points:
* Taxes will rise modestly to Clinton-era levels. Remember Clinton? Back when the economy was booming?
* Military and social spending cuts will be phased in. Those cuts can be stopped at any point in time, and the cut $$ can be retroactively restored as needed.
* Social Security is not part of the budget and need not, and should not, be touched.
Third Way, lobbyists for and from Wall Street who are leading the effort to enrich Wall Street by privatizing Social Security, was created by Wall Street to fool some of the people all of the time. I have written previously here and here to expose their fictional claims to be a moderate or liberal Democratic group.
Eric Lautner documented Wall Street’s effort to become even wealthier by privatizing Social Security in articles and his recent book (“The People’s Pension: The Struggle to Defend Social Security Since Reagan (AK Press)).
I showed that Third Way makes itself useful by providing a faux “liberal” or “moderate” “Democratic” quote machine that can be used to discredit Democrats and Democratic policies such as the safety net. I gave examples of how Third Way gave aid and comfort to the effort to defeat Elizabeth Warren and the effort to unravel the safety net. Third Way continues to prove that you can fool some of the people all of the time.
Americans are not about to have a collective Wile E Coyote moment, paddling furiously in mid-air. Photograph: Warner Bros/Everett/Rex Features
The morning after Barack Obama's re-election, panic broke out. Radio 4 described financial markets slumping on worries over something called a "fiscal cliff". The New York Times, normally drunk on its own sobriety, warned of a "looming fiscal crisis". Other newspapers and TV networks predicted an economic "abyss", "peril", even "imminent armageddon". And that was before you got to the blogs.
The clock is ticking, apparently. Obama has until New Year's Eve in which to strike a deal with the Republicans – otherwise nearly 50 tax cuts will expire and the defence department alone will get slapped with $1.2tn in cuts. Unless the Democrats give the Republicans what they want in the form of further tax giveaways for the richest, the senator Mitch McConnell and his rightwing allies will block any attempt to extend borrowing – with disastrous economic consequences. It sounds like a budgetary version of the film Speed; but this is the fiscal cliff Washington is driving off. And the result will be another recession in the US (and, more likely than not, around the world, too) and soaring unemployment. No wonder ABC News calls it "taxmageddon".
There is just one problem with this version of events: it's exaggerated. Distorted. More spiced-up than a bargain balti.
For a start, the very term is wrong. Even if the most bloodcurdling predictions are borne out, there will be nothing cliff-like about 1 January 2013. Americans are not about to have a collective Wile E Coyote moment, in which they suddenly find themselves paddling furiously in mid-air – before the inevitable descent begins. This isn't a cliff-edge at all; it's more of a slope.
is that the Republicans were the chief architect of it- in the name of getting serious about the debt/deficit and are now basically trying to wriggle out of the deal. They decided last year that they wanted a huge showdown over the debt ceiling, which, of course, led to the failed supercommittee, which then led to the sequestration deal that the Republicans are upset about. They are even rewriting history to make it look like President Obama forced them into the deal.
...because their defiance of "Shock Doctrine" dogma and policies has resulted in...guess what? ... prosperity for all. Steep drops in poverty. High economic growth rates. High employment rates. Good wages and benefits. Big increases in access to education and health care. Burgeoning of middle class ("upward mobility"
. And more. And they've done all this ("New Deal" policies creating prosperity) quickly, over the last decade, after decades of "shocks" by U.S. and European financiers and half a century of gross exploitation and interference.
Another surprise (for those who depend on corporate 'news' monopolies for their perception of the world): Venezuela leads the region in the above list of "New Deal" policies, maintained a sizzling 10% economic growth rate during the 2003 to 2008 period (most of the growth in the PRIVATE sector, not including oil), suffered only slightly in the Bush Junta "shock wave" with NO CUTS in social programs, is back up to over 5% economic growth, was recently designated "THE most equal country in Latin America" by the UN Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean, and Venezuelans rate their own country FIFTH in the world in the Gallup "Well-Being" poll (measure of personal well-being and future prospects).
Similar story in Brazil, in Argentina, in Bolivia, in Ecuador, in Uruguay and other countries with leftist governments. Defiance of Wall Street and other U.S. propagandists on a host of critical issues--including big government spending, strong government regulation of the banksters and other 1%-ers, fair taxation, good wages/benefits, strong labor unions, many kinds of subsidies for the poor ("bootstrapping" , nationalization for scofflaw corporations, national ownership of major resources and use of the revenues for social spending, encouragement of small business and co-ops and more--are the keys to prosperity for all. "Austerity," on the other hand, is key to prosperity for the 1% with guaranteed poverty for the 99%.
The countries with rightwing governments--U.S. client states--are in the shits, with the highest poverty rates in the region, huge discrepancies between rich and poor, vast and ruinous exploitation of resources by multinational corporations, and other economic, political and social destruction, often accompanied by U.S. "war on drugs" militarization and consequent military/police fascism, rightwing death squads and bloody horror against labor unions and other advocates of the poor (Colombia, Honduras) or general bloody mayhem (Mexico).
U.S. "free trade for the rich" and the U.S. "war on drugs" have gone hand in hand, in Latin America, and only the countries that have stood up against these programs of imperial conquest are prospering.
We also suffer from both--the "war on drugs" with the "prison-industrial complex" and vast loss of civil rights, and "free trade for the rich" (outsourcing of jobs to the cheapest labor markets abroad, CEO/big investor looting of good companies, grand theft in the credit market, etc.)--plus the oil wars. We are now getting "shocked" with "austerity."
After close attention to the leftist democracy movement in Latin America, I can confidently tell you two of the main keys to its success: 1) honest, transparent elections*; 2) grass roots organization.
We don't have the first condition for "New Deal" reform--which is also the first condition for democracy: honest, transparent elections.
In fact, our vote counting system--all of it run on 'TRADE SECRET' code owned and controlled largely by one, private, far rightwing-connected corporation (ES&S, which bought out Diebold)--is easily--EASILY!--riggable. Privatized vote-counting is a disgrace to democracy and it is the final blockade to reform. That has to change before we can get to square one on serious reform. We really need to understand that Obama is president by permission of the far rightwing, which also has the power to saddle him with a Diebold Congress. It is plainly obvious that the House of Representatives is NOT representative of the American people, not even close. It is also obvious that Obama is shackled.
Also, the second lesson from Latin American "New Deal" reform--the requirement of grass roots organization--will forever be frustrated, and our people more and more depressed and demoralized, and in danger of social chaos and bloody repression, without honest, transparent elections. Honest, transparent vote counting has to come first.
Grass roots groups have put forward enormous election efforts in this country, not just for president but also for Congress, for state governor, etc., and have often been dumbfounded by their losses in contests they should have won, and then suffered something more: the inability to continue participating in the political process, due to depression, demoralization and lack of resources. It is expensive and exhausting to be a grass roots activist, especially in a country that does not encourage public participation and, indeed, in a country where the government often greatly discourages public participation and adopts the culture of corporate secrecy to prevent the public from knowing what is going on.
"TRADE SECRET" code in the voting machines! Jeez. Could it be any clearer?
Latin America has been through all this before us. They were among the first to be "shocked" by the "Shock Doctrine." We need to learn from them. It took them decades of hard civic work to create honest, transparent election systems--but once they got the election systems democratized, economic reform quickly followed. We need to do that hard civic work, and we need to do it soon. We need, first and foremost, to restore PUBLIC vote counting.
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*(Venezuela uses electronic voting but it is run on OPEN SOURCE code--code that belongs to the PUBLIC and that anyone may review--and they do a whopping 55% audit (comparison of ballots to electronic totals)--more than five times the audit needed to detect fraud in an electronic system. Jimmy Carter recently called Venezuela's election system "the best in the world." His is correct. I've looked into it myself. There is none better--and, as a consequence, Venezuelans now enjoy universal free medical care, universal free education through college, many other "New Deal"-type benefits and general prosperity.
(By comparison, our system is run on 'TRADE SECRET' code--code that the public is FORBIDDEN to review--and half the states do NO AUDIT AT ALL, while the other half do a miserably inadequate 1% audit. Our vote counting system is made-to-order for fraud by the far right and the transglobal interests they serve, whether gross reversals of outcomes or subtler manipulations (such as getting us all to forget Bush, Cheney & Rumsfeld, while tying Obama down with a grossly unrepresentative Congress, and with a far right-skewed false political dialogue on all of our public airwaves and in corporate-controlled print media). We mustn't be fooled by Obama getting elected. Believe me, his mandate has been shaved and he is in bondage--as are all of our Democratic leaders--to ES&S, the most evil corporation that has ever stalked a democracy.)
Let's not forget Iceland and all the progress they've made once realizing the true enemy. Nary a word spoken in that liberal media.
